Robert Farris Thompson

Robert Farris Thompson (December 30, 1932 – November 29, 2021) was an American art historian and writer who specialized in Africa and the Afro-Atlantic world.

He was a member of the faculty at Yale University from 1965 to his retirement more than fifty years later and served as the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art.

Thompson studied the African arts of the diaspora in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Surinam and several Caribbean islands.

[3] He was the first Yale professor and second person in the United States (the first being Roy Sieber at the University of Iowa in 1956) to receive a professorship in African Art history.

Beginning with an article on Afro-Cuban dance and music (published in 1958), Thompson dedicated his life to the study of art history of the Afro-Atlantic world.

[3] His first book was Black Gods and Kings, which was a close reading of the art history of the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria (population of approximately 40 million).

[8] He spoke French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish fluently and could speak Yoruba, Ki-Kongo[9] and German, Flemish, and Kreyol[which?